Real Vim ninjas count every keystroke - do you?

Pick a challenge, fire up Vim, and show us what you got.

Changelog, Rules & FAQ, updates: @vimgolf, RSS.

Your VimGolf key: please sign in

$ gem install vimgolf
$ vimgolf setup
$ vimgolf put [challenge ID]

Played Challenges

A simple change - 372 entries

Just change the numbers in the most efficient way ...

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 5
Mirror Symmetry - 735 entries

Add backslashes.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Number of attempts: 6
Align commas - 929 entries

There are 15,000 aligning challenges on vimgolf.com, and they're all exactly the same. I hope this one is a little different.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 2
Words in parens - 11996 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 7
Flip the bit - 86 entries

Change the specific 0 to a 1.

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 2
Neither Fizz nor Buzz - 200 entries

Not your regular increment macro! The gaps are tricky.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 2
Split line with dots - 2009 entries

This line is too long, split it.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 6
Missing Library and a Typo - 784 entries

I forgot to add a c library, please add it for me. Also I'm bad at typing so fix my typo too.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 4
multiple cursor alternative - 1333 entries

from: https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/6w5pfa/crosspost_from_remacs_how_would_you_do_this_in_vim/

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 5
attr_aligner - 3237 entries

Two attr keywords. Two separate indentations. Align the colons.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 21
  • Number of attempts: 11
Simple, Practical, and Common - 29871 entries

Simple things we do all the time should be able to be done with very few keystrokes, but sometimes I find something I need to do makes me go, "There MUST be a better way." This challenge is just a simple movement and entering text at a certain place.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 18
Harder than "abcd > a b c d" - 64 entries

Not as easy as the last challenge. This time, just one space between a and b, up to 25 spaces between y and z. (Removed some lines; diff was too long.)

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 1
Remove quotes after first field - 212 entries

Remove the quotes around each field except for the first field.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 24
  • Number of attempts: 1
Start coding format - 123 entries

I used to start coding with following format: int main(){ -(cursor here) }

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 24
  • Number of attempts: 6
Alphabet soup - 146 entries

Create a column of all alphabet characters organized in a funky way

  • Best score: 25
  • Best player score: 47
  • Number of attempts: 2
Mute the second method of this script - 418 entries

prepend a # infront of every line of the second method

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 1
Switch function arguments - 1884 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 7
For all cases. - 106 entries

In this case... change it! :) Watch the line.

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 8
  • Number of attempts: 1
Swap assigned value - 505 entries

Simple problem but looking for interesting solutions.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 2
Context Insensitive completion 1 - 397 entries

Finish writing this simple Python HTTP server.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 3
Todo list specification - 318 entries

The every item on the todo list must be done today. Modify the list to reflect that.

  • Best score: 37
  • Best player score: 37
  • Number of attempts: 5
Increment, increment, increment.... - 507 entries

Vim likes macros

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 1
I forgot quotes - 14316 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 8
Swap values inside brackets - 2137 entries

Easy challenge.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 8
Make it more readable - 1797 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 4
Simple text editing with Vim - 11020 entries

Make the pairs of lines match up by making each second line same as first

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 5
-a-b-c- - 2864 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 2
Triangular Numbers - 63 entries

Generate the first 50 triangular numbers.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 2
Collect List - 3890 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 5
Fun With The Diagonal - 89 entries

change the lowercase characters on the main diagonal to uppercase

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 1
Replace Parameter with Explicit Methods - 61 entries

Implementing the methods of a Java Interface

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 38
  • Number of attempts: 5
Delete to the end of the current line - 673 entries

Delete to the end of the current line, but keep the character under the cursor.

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Number of attempts: 1
Add string initializers to an enum - 617 entries

Change Typescript enum so that it has string initializers.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 24
  • Number of attempts: 4
Box it - 6073 entries

Create a box around a line.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 21
  • Number of attempts: 10
Make HTML List - 917 entries

Turn the comma separated list into an unordered html list.

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 47
  • Number of attempts: 2
Happy TvvO - 364 entries

Don’t forget the past, learn from it. Happy New Year.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 2
The name of the game - 594 entries

End up with the name of the game.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 2
Python Hello World! Reformatting - 857 entries

A novice Python using prints Hello World! and a pro shows him different way. Using vim to get into pro style from novice, win the challenge.

  • Best score: 39
  • Best player score: 41
  • Number of attempts: 4
Extract argument from function - 2127 entries

The aim is to see if you can do some refactoring very fast.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 3
Swap values - 4172 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 7
Space out the alphabet - 1463 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 11
Logging with key - 277 entries

Sometimes it is better to log with meaningful key

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 21
  • Number of attempts: 8
Refactor typescript arrow function type - 212 entries

Make arrow function type less verbose and easier to read

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 28
  • Number of attempts: 2
Letter case trickery - 1461 entries

This file is in a downright esoteric format, consisting of hexadecimal numbers, non-hexadecimal keywords, and "Z" indicating end-of-line. Make the hexadecimal numbers lowercase.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 8
Remember VimGolf Rules ! - 209 entries

Rules, ... and don't forget !

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Number of attempts: 2
V to the i - 4341 entries

Input is 99 V's. Output is 100 i's.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Number of attempts: 5
One to Ten - 1720 entries

Generate the sequence of numbers from 1 to 10, one number per line. Inspired by this Reddit thread: https://redd.it/ak4it2

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 1
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10091 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 3
Every other line - 2490 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 3
Paragraph sort - 336 entries

My large herbivorous mammals, Vim commands, and POSIX utilities need to be sorted separately.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 5
Quote modules - 615 entries

Complete golang import statement.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 25
  • Number of attempts: 4
comment and uncomment code inline - 933 entries

It's very useful to be able to comment out a block of code in a quick edit. And likewise to uncomment the code. This operation often involves multi-line stanzas and even large blocks. With just line-wise navigation and insert mode this would cost you about 4 keystrokes per line. Master this hole of VimGolf and you'll quickly drop your key count in day to day Vim as well.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 3
prepend * to every non-blank line - 2709 entries

Prepend an asterisk to every non-blank line in the input file.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 5
Vertical Limit - 2230 entries

transform a succession of one word lines to a an array of strings

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 26
  • Number of attempts: 5
Count both ways - 915 entries

Right AND down.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 4
Condensed Cases - 728 entries

Apple's new programming language, Swift, allows two style of case statements: 1) one Enum case on each line, or 2) multiple Enum cases on a single line. Convert the following from the first case (no pun intended) to the second type.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 8
Vice versa - 6869 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 4
Com(m)a Trouble - 2730 entries

Someone was real stupid when placing his commas. Can you fix it?

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 3
Add semicolons - 7807 entries

Simply add a semicolon at the end of each line

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 1
camel riding - 727 entries

add a prefix on some camelCase variables

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 4
Whitespace, empty lines and tabs - 2715 entries

Convert tabs to spaces, strip empty lines and trailing whitespace.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 23
  • Number of attempts: 7
Preferably without multi-cursor plugin - 364 entries

Originally asked as question on reddit by kpthunder: https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/9fvsro/what_is_the_most_efficient_way_to_go_about/

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 33
  • Number of attempts: 3
Remove noise from HTTP log - 622 entries

This piece of log (from the year 2000) contains some irrelevant data. We only want to see the HTTP method and resource.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 5
Word frequency alignment - 215 entries

You've got to align the second column, but the spacing is inconvenient and there are nasty tabs in the way. If you're a "real Vim ninja," this could be very quick indeed...

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Number of attempts: 6
Nesting SASS - 235 entries

Move a block inside another block and indent it

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 3
Mirrored text - 153 entries

backward and forward, and long enough to be challenging

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 7
Copy three lines - 2457 entries

If the site is up (by some miracle), make the text under every header identical.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 7
Free hyphen! - 126 entries

Just like "Inner hyphens", but I'm giving you a free hyphen to play with. Will your solution be any different?

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 1
Fiddle percentages into real numbers - 761 entries

Get rid of the '%' symbols and shift the decimal place. This is the easier version - all the columns line up.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 2
Number Sort - 261 entries

sort the list of newline-separated numbers incrementally. Numbers are in the range 1 to 1000, with 500 missing

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 1
Basic renumbering - 5108 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 13
Assign numbers to fields - 86 entries

You are given a list of space-separated strings. Add an increasing numeric prefix to each one.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 2
Bad Copy Syntax - 1588 entries

Copy should be from right to left, but sometimes you type it wrong.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 9
Search and Replace 0 - 4434 entries

Replace every instance of 'aaa' with 'xaaax'.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 3
Generate a list of numbers - 256 entries

Please generate list of numbers from 1 to 20.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 2
From A to B - 524 entries

Mirror and change this text block

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 5
Table Reshuffle - 325 entries

Fix the column order in this table... also append the new 'username' column.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 29
  • Number of attempts: 1
One number per line - 16309 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 6
From argument to object - 1215 entries

This task typifies those programmers endure while coding. This C-family pseudocode needs a function argument to be repurposed as an object call. Simply search and replace? Repeat a pattern of edits?

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 3
Numbering a List - 1760 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 23
  • Number of attempts: 3
Paragraph breaks - 424 entries

Swap the blank lines and the aaa lines.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 2
comments galore - 916 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 4
Test everything! - 113 entries

... and build the desired input data structure. Transform a list of values into a non-trivial format.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 24
  • Number of attempts: 12
switch variable - 4614 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 3
Array propagate - 263 entries

Complete the array with the keys as part of the value

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 28
  • Number of attempts: 2
Just the middle - 10344 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Number of attempts: 5
Team names - 1626 entries

The team names are misspelled.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 5
Don't know what this is - 1867 entries

Replace contents of brackets with matching number of spaces. Don't ask what the format's supposed to be.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 3
Scrambled numbers - 753 entries

Four is NOT 1. One is 1.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 9
Hole-in-one - 958 entries

Lets take this golf thing literally.. Drive off the tee into the hole, and of course you don't strike the ball completely clean.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 3
A Simple One - 852 entries

Here is a very simple one - just to illustrate/introduce a vim feature that some people seem to miss...

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 1
Ruby 1.9 hashes - 1101 entries

Rubyists talk about being cutting edge but how many are using 1.9 in production? Time to convert those verbose 1.8 hashes in to symbolic, succinct 1.9 beauties!

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 9
Context insensitive completion 0 - 453 entries

Buried in the lines you're not supposed to add is the line "Add this line!" Add that line to the top of the file.

  • Best score: 6
  • Best player score: 8
  • Number of attempts: 2
Array transposition - 1978 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 11
Adam's challenge - 884 entries

Change both normal to bold and 4 by 2. Adam Wathan challenge this on twitter . He did it in 11 keystrokes on Sublime.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 2
Do you demand a shrubbery? - 1041 entries

Use :redir and crush the emacsgolfers.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 30
  • Number of attempts: 2
remove lines containing the word "reader" - 2826 entries

easy stuff

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 1
move titles next to url, in quotes - 404 entries

had trouble with something similar

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 6

Contributed Challenges

Alphabet soup - 146 entries

Create a column of all alphabet characters organized in a funky way

Preferably without multi-cursor plugin - 364 entries

Originally asked as question on reddit by kpthunder: https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/9fvsro/what_is_the_most_efficient_way_to_go_about/

Refactor typescript arrow function type - 212 entries

Make arrow function type less verbose and easier to read

Add string initializers to an enum - 617 entries

Change Typescript enum so that it has string initializers.

Arijus
Twitter:

Frontend @wix

entered into 98 challenges

contributed 4 challenges